"The captain is right," they said. "It is impossible, if we continue to badger him in this way, that he can understand our arguments."
"We must be just too," others took up the ball. "How can you expect the captain to do justice unless we clearly explain to him what we want?"
The revolt had made an immense backward step. It no longer spoke of deposing its chiefs; it limited itself to asking justice of the captain. Hence it still tacitly recognised him.
At length, after numberless discussions among the mutineers, one of their number was selected to take the word in the name of the rest. He was a short, square-shouldered fellow, with a cunning face, and little eyes sparkling with wickedness and spite; a regular scoundrel in a word. The type of the low-class adventurer, with whom everything is comprised in robbery and assassination. This man, whose nom de guerre was Curtius, was a Parisian, and hailed from the Faubourg Saint Marceau. An ex-soldier, an ex-sailor, he had been at every trade, except, perhaps, that of an honest man. Since his arrival in the colony he had been remarkable for his spirit of insubordination, brutality, and, above all, his bounce. He boasted of "owing eight dead;" that is to say, in the language of the country, having committed eight murders. He inspired his comrades with an instinctive terror. When he was selected to take word he rammed his hat down on the side of his head, and addressing his comrades, said,—
"You shall see how I'll walk into him."
And he advanced, insolently swaying from side to side, toward the captain, who watched his approach with a smile of peculiar meaning. Suddenly a great silence fell on the crowd; hearts beat powerfully, faces grew anxious; each guessed instinctively that something decisive and extraordinary was about to happen.
When Curtius was only two paces from his captain he stopped, and, surveying him insolently, said,—
"Come, captain, the business is this: my com—"
But the count gave him no time to finish. Quickly drawing a pistol from his girdle, he pressed it against his temples and blew out his brains. The bandit rolled in the dust with a fractured skull. The captain returned the pistol to his sash, and coolly raising his head, said in a firm voice:—
"Has anyone further observations to make?"